Andijan

Andijan is a town in the Farghana valley of Central Asia, on the left bank of the upper Jaxartes (Syr Darya), at about 40 degrees 43 minutes north and 72 degrees 25 minutes east. The Farghani sources and Abu al-Fida' treat it as the valley's capital. ^{1 2}

In the fourth/tenth century the town, then called Andukan, was under the Karluks and their Karakhanid successors, and in the fifth/eleventh century under the Saljuqs. In the twelfth century it was the centre of Farghana. The Mongol raids devastated it, and it was rebuilt at the end of the thirteenth century under the Chaghatay khans Kaydu and Duwa. Since then it has been inhabited almost wholly by Turks, whose language became the model for the whole valley; 'Ali Shir Nawa'i used it. Andijan was the valley's capital and the centre of trade with Kashgar in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and in the fifteenth century the capital of the khanate of Khokand. ²

The Russians conquered it in 1875, when it had 30,620 inhabitants, mostly farmers and gardeners. Oilfields and iron mines were opened later. In May 1898 a national-religious rising led by the ishan Madali was put down with much bloodshed. An earthquake in 1902 killed about 4,500 of its 49,682 inhabitants (1900). After the Basmachi rising was suppressed, Andijan became part of the Uzbek Soviet Republic in 1924. In 1939 it had 83,700 people. It is now the centre of a district of cotton growing, with teacher-training and agricultural colleges. ³